


Never forgive, never forget

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbrey uses her goodbrother well. </p><p>Written for Porn Battle XIV, filling my own prompt, "She never forgave and she never forgot."  </p><p>Prompt shamelessly ganked from The Hobbit</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never forgive, never forget

She never extinguishes the light when he comes to her. It’s partially because she doesn’t trust her goodbrother, never has, and Barbrey will never forget the vague disgust that she felt when her sister, a triumphantly cold expression on her face, whispered to her of the things that she permitted Lord Bolton to do to her, all of the prestige and horror of being his bride coloring her words, twisting her normally sweet features into a cruel mask. And Bethany had remained thus, growing more distant as the years passed, as she was tainted by the bloodletting that became her heritage by marriage, as one by one, everyone quailed at the sight of her, as gossip swelled, as her figure thickened and her eyes filled with pain from years of failed pregnancies. 

He doesn’t bother to undress and neither does she. Barbrey sits on the bed, still in her bodice, for winter is upon them and Barrowton poorly insulated against the winds that knock about the wooden walls and insinuate themselves through the chinks in the boards. She rolls her skirts about her waist and sits staring, pale thighs bared, knees slightly parted. Roose undoes his breeches, looking at her as though she is nothing more than one of the few hardy smallfolk who dare to petition the Lord of the Dreadfort for some recourse, or perhaps the steward ready with that month’s accounts. Just another duty, something to fill the hours of the day. It’s all business, always has been, nothing more by this time than a series of abstract motions that tally up to a bit of warmth, a smaller bit of pleasure. 

There was a child born at last, sweet-faced and soft-voiced, his father’s eyes in his mother’s face, who had been sent to her out of pity, a sister’s gift, the only consolation that she, so well-cared for and protected, could give a solitary widow who’d been wronged by her liege lord. And Barbrey had pulled the child to her when he wept for the parents who had so easily sent him away, comforting his pains and drying his tears, and he never knew that in doing so, she healed as well from what the war had so callously ripped from her. She had not loved Willam, not really, but he had cared for her, had made her smile, had filled her days with distraction from a life of disappointment, and that had been _something._

She doesn’t fight his advances, half-hearted as they are, but permits Roose to push her flat against the mattress, to climb on top of her as though she were one of the horses that she loved so well, Ryswell reds and blacks that filled her stables. Like them, she was unpredictable, hard to tame, hard to trust. As he thrusts against her, a hand cruelly clutching her corseted breast too tightly, she stares up, her expression as bland and unreadable as his, the quickening of her breathing the only real betrayal of what she feels. It’s not her goodbrother’s cock stabbing her over again that pleases her, nor is it the knowledge that he’s breaking faith with his wife, a political alliance if there ever was one, to fuck her. It’s this, lying her as though she were in the grave like Bethany, lulling him into a sense of superiority and security, that causes the corners of her mouth to quirk. 

His bastard had bragged loudly and often, hinting at what he’d done after Domeric sickened and died, when Roose had brought his ill-gotten son to the Dreadfort, a consolation prize for what they’d lost. Barbrey had heard her sister rage through parchment and ink, penstrokes so tense and sharp that they’d threatened to tear the paper that they were written on, the letters becoming more scattered and more fragmented until they were replaced with a cold, formal missive from Roose, relaying his regret that his wife had lost her mind, that she was unable to correspond further. And when Barbrey had arrived in those cloistered rooms, too late, she found a house dark and dusty from disuse, closed off, its lord a specter, its heir as beast, its lady a madwoman. She’d bathed her sister’s fevered forehead, read aloud the faded books that Bethany had once so prized, but in the end it was too late, and her sister died with a grin on her face and her son’s name on her lips. 

And now father and son thought to take the north, to buy it with false names and shoddy alliances. So Barbrey laughed in private until her chest ached from it, dug her nails into her palms when the bastard had graced her table, her cool dismissal the one brave action of her life, and she used and let herself be used in her chambers after everyone else had gone to bed. Such actions did not trouble her. They were a diversion, an amusement. She wondered if Bethany had lain there with her face vacant and her eyes staring as Roose had his way with her, if she’d found him pleasing or distasteful, if she slept easily after it was all over. And she wondered too, if Bethany had used the time to think of the best place to stick a knife when the opportunity arose, for that was all such acts, in the end, were good for.


End file.
